


japanese denim

by xelin



Category: A.C.E (Beat Interactive Band)
Genre: Just aesthetic rambling, M/M, Vague angst, soft hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 19:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15936608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xelin/pseuds/xelin
Summary: one midsummer, somewhere between late-night walks and coke cans, donghun finds company.





	japanese denim

**Author's Note:**

> it's 3am, this is very short & i just...... really wanted to try vague aesthetic writing honestly  
> please excuse any errors- i'll fix them when i'm not half asleep whoops  
> this has lyrics from japanese denim by daniel caesar!! it's a soft song  
> enjoy u_u

  * **sun was getting hot, i’m lonely.**



The first time they meet resides in Donghun’s mind like a drunken memory: soft, hazy, blurred at the edges. If he thinks too hard, it disappears almost completely, and he is left wondering if it was some brief trick of the heat.

Donghun glances down the shallow slope of the valley. The soft trickle of water reveals the creek, tucked beneath dead grass as though hiding from the summer warmth. Amidst the absolute silence, the hum of the river is dull static. It's always empty here.

Aside from today.

He is resting in a patch of flattened grass, legs splayed in the water. His torn up jeans cling uncomfortably to his legs from the wet. Across his shoulders rests a baby blue jacket, sleeves rolled up a fraction below the elbow.

When he looks up to see Donghun, it is as though a switch is flicked in his brain. Wide eyes close a fraction, a hand lifts to block out the sun. Despite the action, it illuminates his entirety; casts golden flecks across bare skin; turns loose brown hairs orange; reddens parted lips like an instant burn.

Donghun’s overriding curiosity smothers the initial urge to avoid conversation, and he steps down to the river bank. He stretches out his legs so that the toes of his shoes barely part the stream. The water is tepid.

“It’s hot,” is what Donghun hears. Opposite him, a tongue runs across those parted lips, before they are pulled open into a grin. The gesture is short and warm. Donghun decides that he truly fits in with the summer. From this close, he can see freckles dusting tanned skin, long eyelashes shadowing bright eyes, little cracks in those lips.

“I’m Junhee,” he continues. “You can call me Jun, if you want.”

“Alright, Jun,” Donghun replies. Jun smiles, almost childlike, and presses a finger to the corner of his own lip.

“I like your piercing,” he says. Donghun runs his tongue along the metal ring. He wonders how Jun would look with a piercing. The hair fanning softly across his brow, the pink dusting his cheekbones, the entirety of comfort trapped within his smile. He wouldn't dare alter something like this.

Jun is a curious individual, Donghun decides.

  * **i’m in the city on my own.**



“It’s nice, being somewhere quiet,” is what Jun tells Donghun when they run into each other three days later. Despite the heat, he is wearing a pastel yellow sweatshirt.

“It can be too quiet,” Donghun says, matching his pace to Jun’s. A car drives past, the windows rolled down and indecipherable music playing.

“I like it so far.” Jun tucks his fingers into his sleeves, as though trying to keep the chill out in winter. His smile is easygoing and ever unchanging.

“Where are you from?” Donghun scuffs his dirty converse against the concrete as they walk.

“A busy place,” is all Jun says. He brushes his hair back and scrunches up his nose. Stray strands fall across his forehead. “I’d rather live here, I think.”

Everything about Jun says anything but ‘busy’.

  * **i don’t stand in line, but i’ll wait for you.**



It’s over a week until they see one another again, but Jun is holding up a can of coke like a peace offering. Donghun takes it.

“It’s cooler at night,” Jun says, cracking open his own coke.

The nighttime air is still unbearably hot, disturbed only by a short breeze every few minutes.

“You’re right,” Donghun says anyway. Jun is in a striped shirt. His shoes are pink. Even at night, Donghun thinks he looks sort of like a cloud.

They walk to the creek, to the edge of the forest, and all the way around town. Cicadas buzz, creating the illusion of the distant hum of cars. Jun says he doesn’t like it. Donghun doesn’t understand, but he still agrees.

When they finish the coke, Jun tells him that cans should go in recycling bins. Donghun says they don’t have any on the streets around town, so Jun carries the cans in his pockets. “Until I find one,” he explains.

“Do you wish you lived somewhere else?” Jun asks. He is watching Donghun with a sort of curiosity, lazy smile drawn across his lips. Everything about Jun is quiet, and gentle.

“Not really.”

  * **i don’t like to think, but i’ll ponder you.**



One far-too-hot evening, they share a lukewarm beer with legs dangling out of a tree. Hands scuffed with dirt brush against one another in each passing of the can. To Donghun, the contact feels like touching the burning metal of a car under the afternoon sun.

“I haven’t been in a forest before.” Jun pouts. Even in the lack of light, his lips look candy pink. Donghun looks away, and digs the dirt out from under his nails.

A thumb swipes across his lip, and Donghun stills. Jun pulls his hand back, looking away as though nothing had happened.

“I wish I could look good with that piercing,” he says.

If the brush of hands was touching something hot, then that contact was scalding.

Jun was summer, leaving burns in his wake.

  * **i never would’ve thought you’d be the one.**



They’re lying in the grass. Jun plucks dead strands out of the dry earth with careful fingers. Donghun watches him for a while, then takes some of the strands, and begins to thread them together. He rests the tiny yellow braids on Jun’s stained jeans.

Donghun mentally joins the dots between Jun’s freckles, turning them into little constellations. With every blink, eyelashes brush against high cheekbones. His lips press together in focus, as though plucking dead grass requires utmost concentration. It’s fascinating.

“When do you leave?” Donghun asks.

Jun looks up, eyes widening almost imperceptibly. “I’m here for a month. So, a little over a week.”

Donghun hums, waits for Jun’s attention to shift back to the grass, tucks a messy section of hair behind the other boy’s ear. It’s soft beneath rough fingers, and catches the sunlight as it moves.

Jun doesn’t say anything, but his natural smile tweaks a little higher at the left corner of his mouth.

  * **my blue jeans will last me all my life.**



“What kind of cinema shows movies from over a decade ago?” Jun asks. He’s folding his Pulp Fiction ticket up as small as it will go, legs tucked up into his seat.

“This one,” Donghun answers simply. “It’s privately owned. I don’t think it shows anything from after 1996.”

Jun drops the folded up ticket into the cup holder, changing his focus to the screen. The room is tiny, and they’re the only ones there. Often, when Donghun goes alone, it’s this empty too. There is no air conditioning, and his shirt feels as though it’s sticking to his back a little.

“It’s sort of charming, I suppose,” Jun says, resting his chin on his palm. “A lot of this town is charming.”

Distantly, Donghun thinks so too.

  * **so should we; i’m spending all this time.**



On the last night, Jun waits for Donghun outside of his house, until he comes out in a tank top and a cap - which Jun instantly takes to place over his own hair.

“Why do you go by Jun?” Donghun questions, as they walk down the middle of the road.

“I don’t.” Jun smiles a little wider. “I just said you can call me it, if you want.”

Mid-walk, Jun sits down in the middle of the road, falling flat backwards. The moonlight turns his hair silver rather than gold. It’s less Jun, yet beautiful all the same.

“Come look at the stars with me,” Jun tells him, patting the black tarmac beside him. Donghun does. Their shoulders end up pressed together.

“Do you see many stars in busy places?”

Jun turns his head a little, to look at him. Donghun almost does the same, but changes his mind upon remembering how close they are.

“No. Nothing like here,” Jun says, lips parting in a genuine grin. His hand slips beneath Donghun’s, and he laces their fingers together.

His hand is warm, like dipping your palm into the creek in the summer heat.

  * **forever’s a long time.**



For a long time, Donghun spent his time by himself. He would sit by the creek, walk through the sunlit town, climb trees in the forest, lie in the grass, see budget movies, wander the roads at night to see the stars. Now, each activity carried a trace of Jun, who had brown hair and bright lips and colourful clothes.

He ends up sitting by the creek, pushing his legs into the water. It seeps into the denim of his jeans. It’s unpleasant, and he doesn’t understand why Jun liked it.

His tongue presses against the metal of his piercing. Absentmindedly, he wonders if Jun will ever get a piercing, like he wants.

If he does, Donghun hopes he gets to see it.


End file.
